Tagged: Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Edward Said claimed,1 and Noam Chomsky agreed, that the acceptable range of political attitudes about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are much more diverse among Israeli Jews than American Jews. I’ve been searching for some hard evidence that American Jews are more hawkish toward Palestinians than Israeli Jews, but haven’t found any.

The claim is plausible, though. Conflict-generated diaspora groups might feel a stronger urge to demonstrate in-group loyalty to compensate for their absence. Terrence Lyons explains in his 2004 paper,

One dynamic that tends to make conflicts in the homeland more protracted, therefore, is the existence of certain types of diaspora groups with strong symbolic attachments to a territory and uncompromising views on how conflict there should be understood and contested.

A further potentially important source of start-up finance for rebellion is a diaspora living in OECD countries. Such diasporas are usually much richer than the population in their country of origin. They are better-placed for collective action: emigrants have a cultural incentive to create diaspora organizations which can then discipline free-riding. They do not suffer the consequences of the conflicts they finance. As with grievance among the local population, in the greed-model grievance among the diaspora is assumed to be manufactured by the rebel organization rather than being an original cause of conflict. Hence, the diaspora increases the risks of conflict renewal, but not the initial risk of conflict. We measure the size of diasporas in the USA relative to the population in their country of origin.

They find,

By far the strongest effect of war on the risk of subsequent war works through diasporas. After five years of post-conflict peace, the risk of renewed conflict is around six times higher in the societies with the largest diasporas in America than in those without American diasporas. Presumably this effect works through the financial contributions of diasporas to rebel organisations.

Collier and Hoeffler also controlled for how large diasporas might be because of the size of conflicts themselves.

The case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular isn’t so straightforward. Jonathan Rynhold, writing in 2008, explains, “Prior to the 1980s Diaspora identification with Israel was expressed in unwavering support for Israeli policies. Since then Diaspora support for Israeli policies cannot be taken for granted.” Rynhold holds that the 1982 Lebanon War dissolved the unanimity of opinion in the diaspora, due to the media coverage of Sabra and Chatilla. The 1980s brought the Jonathan Pollard affair, as well as the First Intifada, which impelled liberals to contemplate the policies in the Palestinian territories.

It would be useful to collect opinion data from emigrant communities connected to current ongoing conflicts, and compare them to opinion data in the homelands. Where can I get some good, current research on this?